Contact Details

School of Paediatrics and Reproductive Health
Discipline of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Faculty of Health Sciences
The University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005

Telephone: +61 8 8303 4088
Fascimile: +66 8 8303 4099
Email

Life Course and Intergenerational Health (LIGHt) Research Group

A/Prof Vivienne Moore

LIGHt Group co-director A/Prof Vivienne Moore

The research priorities of the LIGHt group are to investigate:

• Safety and effectiveness of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART)

- What are the sources of the excess risk of birth defects in children conceived using ART?
- Do children conceived using ART have an excess risk of poor developmental outcomes?
- Is ART associated with increased risks of cancer in women and their children?

• How the reproductive health of women can be optimised

- What is the aetiology of polycycstic ovary syndrome?
- Is poor reproductive health transmitted across generations?
- How commonly do relatively young women seek infertility treatment, and why?
- What social and structural factors enable women to have children before their fertility is compromised by ageing?

• Early life experiences and health outcomes in children

- Do conditions in the womb affect the metabolic health of children?
- Does folic acid supplementation in late pregnancy increase the risk of asthma in children?
- Are there critical periods before birth and in early childhood for the development of central adiposity in children?
- Does depression in mothers, and other adverse events in the family, have enduring consequences for child mental health?

• How gender relations and other socially-embedded conditions affect health of women and children

- How do women understand and respond to health promotion messages about obesity?
- How and why are women continually made responsible for the health of the family? What are the implications for women's well-being?
- Do parenting practices, family work schedules, role stereotypes within families contribute to obesity in children?
- How are gender and social class implicated in policies and population approaches that address obesity?

Projects

The program is underpinned by three established community-based cohort studies. These studies are examining the risk of birth defects in children and cancer in women following infertility treatment, the prenatal origins of reproductive disorders in women, and the role of antenatal and postnatal factors, including diet, for the optimal development and lifelong health of babies, respectively.

The studies:

Assisted Reproductive Technologies birth cohort
Lucina cohort
Generation 1 cohort

Recent achievements by LIGHt members

• A/Prof Michael Davies awarded the 2010 James Petrie Visiting Fellowship, the University of Aberdeen.
• A/Prof Vivienne Moore nominated for inclusion in the 2009 South Australian Women's Honour Roll, in recognition of her services to women's health.
• Two papers published by the LIGHt group were recognised by the Faculty of 1000 as benchmark articles in their fields: Whitrow et al. 2009, Faculty of 1000 Biology; March et al. 2010 [epub in 2009], Faculty of 1000 Medicine.
• Refereed paper by Zivokovic et al. "In the name of the child: the gendered politics of childhood obesity" accepted for special issue of Journal of Sociology.
• Extensive international media interest in the paper examining the impact of prenatal folic acid supplementation on childhood asthma by Whitrow, Moore, Rumbold and Davies (2009). By late 2009, there were 132 media reports of this work, largely by international agencies including Reuters Health and AAP.
• Dr Alice Rumbold named the 2009 South Australian Young Tall Poppy of the Year and awarded Most Outstanding Early Career Researcher, Discipline of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, The University of Adelaide in 2009.
• Dr Lynne Giles awarded a NHMRC Training (Postdoctoral) Fellowship in Public Health (commenced 30 June 2010).
• Dr Melissa Whitrow received the Early Career Award for best oral presentation by an early career research fellow at the ‘Epidemiology over the Lifespan' meeting for the South Australian Chapter of the Australasian Epidemiological Association.

Key Recent Publications

2010

Giles LC, Glonek GFV, Moore VM, Davies MJ, Luszcz MA. Lower age at menarche affects survival in older Australian women: Results from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing. BMC Public Health. 2010;10(1):341.

Rumbold AR, Bailie RS, Si D, Dowden MC, Kennedy CM, Cox RJ, et al. Assessing the quality of maternal health care in Indigenous primary care services. Med J Aust. 2010 May 17;192(10):597-8.

Warin M. Foucault’s progeny: Jamie Oliver and the art of governing obesity. Social Theory and Health 2010;In press.

Warin M, Dennis S. Honeyed tongues and hostile intimacy: Engaging trauma across migrant worlds. Emotion, Society & Space. 2010;In press.

Whitrow MJ, Moore VM, Rumbold AR, Davies MJ. Re: "The effect of supplemental folic acid in pregnancy on childhood asthma: a prospective birth cohort study." American Journal of Epidemiology. 2010;171(6):747.

Whitrow M, Harding S. Asthma in Black African, Black Caribbean and South Asian adolescents in the MRC DASH study: a cross sectional analysis. BMC Pediatrics. 2010;10:18.

Whitrow M, Harding S, Maynard MJ. The influence of parental smoking and family type on saliva cotinine in UK ethnic minority children: a cross sectional study. BMC Public Health. 2010;10:262.

Zivkovic T, Warin M, Davies M, Moore V. Smoking guns and imperfect wombs: The gendered reproduction of obesity. Fat Embodiment, Feminism and Psychology. 2010;In press.

Zivkovic T, Warin M, Davies MJ, Moore VM. In the Name of the Child: The Gendered Politics of Childhood Obesity. Journal of Sociology 2010;In press.

Champion S, Giles LC, Moore VM. Parenting beliefs and practices contributing to overweight and obesity in children. Australasian Epidemiologist [not refereed]. 2010;17(1):21-5.

Dawson AP, Steele EJ, Hodges PW, Stewart S. Utility of the Oswestry Disability Index for studies of back pain related disability in nurses: evaluation of psychometric and measurement properties. Int J Nurs Stud. 2010 May;47(5):604-7.

Harding S, Whitrow M, Lenguerrand E, Maynard MJ, Teyhan A, Cruickshank K, et al. Emergence of ethnic differences in blood pressure in adolescence: The Determinants of Adolescent Social well-being and Health study. Hypertension. 2010;55:1063.

Masters SM, Halbert J, Giles LC, Crotty M. Development and Testing of a Questionnaire to Measure the Older Person's Experience of the Transition Care Program in Australia. Australasian Journal on Ageing. 2010, in press.

Smith J, Braunack-Mayer A, Wittert G, Warin M. Qualities men value when communicating with GPs: implications for primary care settings. Med J Aust. 2010;189:618-21.

Steenkamp M, Bar-Zeev S, Rumbold A, Barclay L, Kildea S. Pragmatic indicators for remote Aboriginal maternal and infant health care: why it matters and where to start. Aust N Z J Public Health. 2010 Jul;34 Suppl 1:S5-8.

Tan S, Tabrizi S, Rumbold AR, Garland S. Human papillomavirus genotyping in archival vulval dysplastic or neoplastic biopsy tissues: comparison between the INNO-LiPA and Linear Array assays. Journal of Clinical Microbiology 2010;In press.

2009

Giles LC, Moore VM, Whitrow MJ, Sawyer MG, Lynch JW, Davies MJ. Critical period, accumulation and social mobility hypotheses: Using a regression framework to explore mothers' partner status in early childhood and externalising behaviours of children at 5½ years. Australasian Epidemiologist [not refereed] 2009; 16(3): 25-29.

Giles LC, Halbert JA, Gray LC, Cameron ID, Crotty M. The distribution of health services for older people in Australia: where does Transition Care fit? Australian Health Review 2009; 33(4): 572-581.

Giles LC, Hawthorne G, Crotty M. Quality of life among hospitalised older people awaiting long-term care. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2009; 7:71.

March WA, Moore V, Willson KJ, Phillips D, Norman R, Davies MJ. The prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome in a community sample assessed under contrastin diagnostic criteria. Hum Reprod 2010; 25: 544-51.

Marino JL, Holt VL, Chen C, Davis S. Lifetime occupational history and risk of endometriosis. Scand J Work Env Health 2009; 35(3): 233-240.

Rumbold AR, Bennett CM. The epidemiology workforce crisis- are we planning for the future? Aust N Z J Public Health 2009; 6:26.

Warin MJ, Moore VM, Davies MJ. [book chapter] The traffic in ‘nature'" maternal bodies and obesity. In: Unnithan-Kumar M, Tremane S (Eds). Fatness and the maternal body: women's experiences of corporeality and the shaping of social policy. Oxford: Berghahn Books; 2010.

Whitrow MJ, Moore VM, Rumbold AR, Davies MJ. Effect of supplemental folic acid in pregnancy on childhood asthma: a prospective birth cohort study. Am J Epidemiol 2009; 170: 1486-9.

Conn JA, Davies MJ, Walker RB, Moore VM. Food and nutrient intakes of 9-month-old infants in Adelaide, Australia. Public Health Nutrition 2009; 12(12): 2448-2456.

Crotty M, Prendergast J, Battersby MW, Rowett D, Graves SE, Leach G, Giles LC. Self-management and peer support among people with arthritis on a hospital joint replacement waiting list: A randomised controlled trial. Osteoarthritis and Cartilage 2009; 17(11): 1428-1433.

Mahajan NN, Turnbull DA, Davies MJ, Jindal UN, Briggs NE, Taplin JE. Adjustment to infertility: the role of intrapersonal and interpersonal resources/vulnerabilities. Hum Reprod 2009; 24(4): 906-912.